- Microsoft lays out SQL Server road map
- Credit card skimming
- Nortel's stock market capitalization plummets
- Will Apple be forced to make more money?
- CAN SPAM: What went wrong?
Newsletters | Podcasts | Chats | Opinions | RSS Feeds | This Week In Print | IT Careers | Community | Reports | Downloads | Slideshows | New Data Center
Partner Sites:Application Performance Solutions | App Performance | Networking Solution | SafeGuard Enterprise Solution Center | SOA | Test your Web Filter | Value of WDS
Every year, more than 5,000 laptops are lost in taxis in London, New York, Chicago and other large cities. According to our research, in 2008 companies' topmost security investment was laptop encryption. Laptop hard drives are getting bigger and now can hold hundreds of thousand to hundreds of millions of sensitive records.
As a CSO, one of your top priorities is probably to keep your company off the front page of the news. Is it inexcusable to have laptops in the field with unencrypted hard drives? With such new open source solutions as TrueCrypt, there are few excuses left: All laptops must be fully encrypted.
Encryption technology is easy, but encryption solutions are hard. Key management and recovery make it difficult to manage large-scale encryption. Even low-cost encryption software for laptops can add up quite quickly if you deploy it on all laptops. Even if you can afford the cost of the software, however, you have to look at the complexity of the whole solutions
TrueCrypt, an open source encryption solution now offers cross-platform (Windows, Mac, Linux), whole-disk encryption that is surprisingly easy to deploy and use. The software is slick, both in the initial installation and disk encryption and in its daily use. It's unobtrusive, has no noticeable impact on performance and requires almost no user training. Furthermore, it is free to use and free to modify. Even the smallest companies now have few excuses for not deploying whole-drive laptop encryption.
As with any offering, the challenge is recovery from a disk failure or password loss. TrueCrypt will create rescue CDs that can be used to recover from corrupted data and boot blocks. In addition, the rescue CD can be protected with a master administrator pass-phrase that is independent from the user pass-phrase. So, users can change passwords and administrators can still recover disks without knowing the user pass-phrase. Rescue CDs can be carried by users (you still need the pass-phrase to use the rescue CD) and also stored in a central location (a fireproof, locked safe).
Although data can be salvaged from an unencrypted drive even after heavy corruption, encrypted disks can become irrevocably corrupted. I would recommend combining TrueCrypt with a good backup solution, preferably an online (over-the-network) backup solution so as to be protected from data loss.

The Vista era of Windows is here. Yet most organizations will retain Windows XP alongside new Vista...
Vulnerability Management For DummiesDownload this concise book "Vulnerability Management for Dummies," to learn about the simple steps...
Security Considerations When Deploying Remote Access SolutionsEffective network security is most successful when you use a layered approach, with multiple...

The Vista era of Windows is here. Yet most organizations will retain Windows XP alongside new Vista...
Turning information into a Competitive AdvantageCompanies today are realizing that competitive advantage is harder to sustain when based solely on...
PoE Plus: Impact on the PoE MarketThe standard for Power over Ethernet (PoE), IEEE Std. 802.3af(tm)-2003, advanced networking,...

Discover why Unified Threat Management Firewalls are ready for the enterprise today. High...
The Evolution of Network SecurityWe have so many holes punched in our firewalls today that many industry insiders question the value...
The self-managed networkWe aren't there yet, but advances in network and systems management tools are making it possible to...
Partner Content
Brilliantly simple security and control solutions for email, web and endpoint
www.sophos.com
Stopping data leakage
Learn how to exploit your current security investment to control the information that flows into, through and out of your network.
Download the white paper.
Why detection rates aren't enough
Evaluating endpoint security products is a time-consuming and daunting task. Learn the six critical questions you need to ask prospective vendors to get the right endpoint solution.
Download the white paper.
Applications: taking back control
Employees installing unauthorized applications is a growing threat to business security and productivity. Cost-effectively reduce this threat by integrating control into your malware protection.
Learn more today.
Comments (10)
There shouldn’t be any excuses...By Anonymous on July 31, 2008, 4:14 pmThere shouldn’t be any excuses. But really there haven’t been any excuses for years. Free encryption solutions and some very good commercial applications have been...
Reply | Read entire comment
There shouldn’t be any excuses...By Anonymous on July 31, 2008, 12:14 pmThere shouldn’t be any excuses. But really there haven’t been any excuses for years. Free encryption solutions and some very good commercial applications have been...
Reply | Read entire comment
There shouldn’t be any excuses...By Anonymous on July 31, 2008, 12:13 pmThere shouldn’t be any excuses. But really there haven’t been any excuses for years. Free encryption solutions and some very good commercial applications have been...
Reply | Read entire comment
BackupBy Anonymous on July 27, 2008, 8:12 pmJungledisk is a good option.
Reply | Read entire comment
One option is a backupBy Anon on July 25, 2008, 4:39 pmOne option is a backup server from WideBand. It uses encryption in transit to their site. If you want the backup encrypted end-to-end, you can use a GoldKey token.
Reply | Read entire comment
View all comments